salve spiritus ignis
by karebear
Summary: Her father gave her flame alchemy, but she always knew it was supposed to be for Roy. Did he realize, as his ink flooded her skin, that with every dark red line he was offering her, body and whatever soul she had left, to his apprentice? (follow up of sorts to Transference)


"Let us dwell together in peace, warm me in the cold, give me light in the darkness…" she trails off, looking up at Roy.

"That's…" He actually blushes slightly as he shakes his head. He's not about to call some scrap of translated not-Amestrian _pretty_. But it is. _Greetings, Spirit of Fire._

"It's poetry, Mister- Roy." He smiles at the correction, glad she's willing to drop the formality now that it really is just the two of them, alone together in this huge empty house. "I've read it to you before."

"That was what you read, my first week here?"

She nods. "The Rites - Four Elements: Earth, Fire, Air, Water. It wasn't directly translated in that book, just sort of… referenced."

"Who taught you to read _Latin_?"

"School. It's the language of the sciences, how do you _not_ know it?"

"I have you."

 _Let us dwell together in peace, warm me in the cold._

A flame flickers in the oil lamp on the kitchen table, casting a gentle circle of light over the two of them, and the piles of books and papers they're transcribing.

Roy reaches over to run his thumb over the hollow between Riza's shoulderblades. The white shirt she's wearing is thin enough to see through, offering almost no protection from his gaze. It's comfortable and easy to slip off if she has to, and she isn't embarrassed by the way Roy looks at her. He's more squeamish than she is, really. He stops just before he touches her, but she nods her permission and then he traces his thumb over the tightly scrawled letters. _salve spiritus ignus._

Why would Master Hawkeye tattoo an ancient poem onto his daughter's body? Not that Roy's comfortable with _any_ of this, but the transmutation circle he at least understands. Flowery language can't create an alchemical equation, no matter how pretty it sounds when Riza reads it. He wouldn't do it without purpose, though, would he? He wouldn't prolong Riza's pain for no reason. Would he?

Berthold Hawkeye was intense and unpredictable, and, in hindsight, dangerously unstable. But whatever he did would've made sense _to him_. "What's the next part?"

"Love is as completely mighty as he is naked. Let him love tomorrow who has never loved, and let him who has loved love tomorrow." Now, Riza _is_ obviously blushing. She pulls away from Roy's touch and he lets her. Her breathing hitches as the full comprehension of what she is marked with crashes over her. The torture of her father's needle, incomprehensible pain and fear and loneliness and hate, resolves itself into a _love poem_ that she is reading to _Roy Mustang_.

"It's coded," he says softly, and she nods because of course it is. Nothing else makes sense. And he has to figure it out because if he doesn't, no one will. "Let's take a break."

"No. I'm good. Keep going." She nods toward the circle he's drawn, the largest part of the tattoo, clean lines and triangles. "Any progress there?"

"A little. But I'm serious, Riza, please, let's just… stop."

She breathes out, slow, and then she nods. "Okay."

"Okay." Roy stands up, stretching stiff muscles and frowning down at Riza. The flame-light dances over her and casts flickering shadows. "I never wanted…" he sighs, and scrubs his face with his hand and he can't look at her without seeing blood. Fire coded in blood. "Ri, if I knew… why didn't you _call_ me?"

"You wanted me to call you at military school to tell you… what? Come home- back. Come back and stop my father from inking an array into my skin?"

"I would've."

"I know. That's why I didn't call you."

"You didn't have to let him…"

"I didn't _let_ him. I didn't stop him. There's a difference." Roy nods, as if that makes sense to him, and maybe it does. He knows what her father was like. "He needed me, Roy," she whispers, and in those words, she is grieving. With Berthold's death, she lost the last flickering chance at something she never had: a father who cared for her. But she loved him, even when she hated him, and she _hates_ him, so fiercely it shakes her to the core.

Roy pulls her gently to her feet, and then he wraps his arms around her and holds her close, and she doesn't protest or push him away. "I need you, too," he says quietly. And he is warm and strong and his voice is the deep rumble of a grown man and not the boy she remembers, and she has never needed his protection, but she wants it, now. She wants someone to want her, to _see_ her. She needs someone to love her, and he does.

They'd kissed, brief and chaste, a twelve-year-old's fumbling experimentation, before he left her for the academy. She never expected him to come back, because people don't _come back_ when they leave her. But she wrote to him when her father was dying, because she didn't know what else to do. Berthold's cruel obsession had shaped both of them; her father _gave her_ flame alchemy, but she always knew it was supposed to be for Roy. Did he realize, as his ink flooded her skin, that with every dark red line he was offering her, body and whatever soul she had left, to his apprentice?

If it was anyone but Roy Mustang who stood to inherit his research, Riza would've fought him. Does _Roy_ know that?

God, she's so tired. It's not like she and Roy aren't used to all-nighters, but this isn't that. This is the exhaustion of letting go, or trying to. Roy holds her as she breathes the shaky breaths that might be crying, but no tears fall, and he kisses the back of her neck and cradles her hip and he murmurs "I'm sorry, Ri. I should've never left."

She shrugs, as much as she can while constricted comfortably within his arms. "You had to," she says softly. "You had to leave to come back."

"He never would've taught me any of this, would he?" Riza doesn't answer that, but she doesn't have to. "He didn't trust me."

"He didn't trust anybody."

"Yeah." Roy sighs, and his breath flutters across the back of her neck, a breeze that ruffles the thin fabric of her shirt and makes her shiver. "You still want me to do this?" he asks, running a thumbnail up her spine, bisecting the circle.

"You want it, don't you?"

"Not if it hurts you."

She shakes her head. "It doesn't. I mean… it did, but I knew what I was doing. It was always for you."

" _God_ , Ri…"

" _I_ trust you." She shifts, so that she can face him, and she tilts her head up so that she can press her lips to his. He holds her breath for half a second, and then he opens his mouth slightly and returns the kiss, and there's nothing chaste about it. It's still an experiment, but one with a foregone conclusion.

 _quique amavit cras amet_

"Let him who has loved love tomorrow."


End file.
